Check out the latest recommendations to sprucing up your home!
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Rollup Over-the-Sink Drying Rack
This over-the-sink drying rack is great with and without a dishwasher. It rolls up so if you don’t want it hanging out, it is easy to put away. I do keep mine out because of how often I use it.
If you have dishes that you cannot put in the dishwasher, this is perfect for you. It sits above your sink so I like to cover half my sink so that I still have room to wash.
If you have a dishwasher, you probably have a few things on the top rack that never dries fully. This is great for those items that you still need to air dry and cannot put back in the cabinets immediately. Or if you have a dishwasher that just sucks at drying, then this is perfect for you.
Food Processor
I love having a food processor to reduce the amount of prep time especially when I am preparing larger meals or multiple dishes. It great for taking my least favorite tasks of chopping or mincing some of the harder ingredients to cut like pecans, walnuts, and carrots.
It’s fantastic for making salsas and chutneys where you can throw large chunks of vegetables in and it will do all the cutting and mixing for you. I use my primarily to make Oreo balls which breaking down Oreos is a very tedious and physically consuming task. If your parents cook a lot, then this is a wonderful gift to help take away some of the physical strain. The blade is easy to clean as it is simple.
My food processor is much safer than most blenders since it will not start unless you have everything cleaner into place including the lid so there is no chance of sitting a hand in there. It’s also more contained, so less likely to spill or make a splatter.
Onion/Vegetable Chopper
Cut down the amount of time cutting onion from minutes to seconds. This is one of my favorite tools for the kitchen if you have to chop vegetables. It has many different kinds of blades that allows you to make large dices, small dices, spirals, and ribbons. I use it mostly for onions since our household loves onions in our recipes but you can use it on all sorts of vegetables!
For those with a food processor, I still recommend having this separate tool in my kitchen because food processor cannot produce the consistent shape for each cut. To use, you will need to apply some pressure to push the vegetable down onto the blade but it’s not too much work. Depending on the sides of your vegetable, you likely still need a knife and cutting board to cut it to a larger chunk that fits within the blade window.
This is also an eye saver if you are victim to watery eyes when dicing onions!
Dishwasher Clean Dirty Magnet
This is an easy, inexpensive house warming gift. Whether you are living alone or with others, this magnet is helpful for not mixing your clean and dirty dishes. It’s simple and easy to use. I personally love the slider magnet to push with my finger to switch from “clean” to “dirty”. I started with the red/green slider magnet but gifting the cute blue one since it’s cuter and less stark of a look.
With the flip magnet, I like the pretty pattern on both sides. However, I find it will be a little more work to flip the magnet versus the slider but it depends on what look you are going for.
I used to have the kind of magnet where you turn it upside down and both “clean” and “dirty” were listed on it. I do not recommend that one since it requires a bit more effort to read which one is up making it visually harder to figure out fast.
